In the Unlikely Event

“You talk to her. You hear her out. You give her shite, then you move on and let it go, focusing on your happiness. Because, Rory?”

I blink up at him.

“Blood is thicker than water, and it’s only when you’re about to lose someone in your family that you realize just how much you truly love them.”

A NOTE FROM DEBBIE (RORY’S MOM)

 

Before you judge me, consider this: I did everything I could, and I worked with what I had.

Can we please just keep in mind that I had Rory when I was eight-goddamn-teen? I was supposed to go to college, for Christ’s sake. To have a life, a future, a steady boyfriend. The wedding of my dreams, a big Italian family with a good boy from the right side of the tracks. All of that—poof!—gone. And for what? One mistake? Everyone makes mistakes. Some just have more weight than others.

Mine happened to crush my entire life.

Of course, I love my daughter. But that’s why I did what I had to do.

It seemed a little unfair that I was put in this situation. Single mother, struggling to put dinner on the table, forever late with paying the bills. I dwelled on the unfairness of it all for years, when I clocked in and out of a drugstore I hated, working double shifts and leaving Rory with a sixteen-year-old babysitter who occasionally forgot to feed her. Unfortunately, she was the only sitter I could afford, so I had to shove some food into Rory right before I left for my shift.

I’ve done some things I’m not proud of to make sure we had a roof over our heads. My folks weren’t mighty thrilled to find out I got knocked up overseas, and they definitely didn’t offer to help me, let alone house me. In fact, their exact words were, “You’re done here, young lady. Pack a bag and leave, or we’ll do it for you.”

They died months apart when Rory was three, so they didn’t even get to see how great she turned out. How well we both did. How we made it.

The day they told me I was no longer welcome in their house, I vowed to make sure she’d have everything I didn’t.

What did I do to support us? Well, what didn’t I do?

I worked double shifts, scrubbed diner kitchen floors on weekends with Rory in her little sling carrier attached to me, taking cat naps and staring at me periodically with her kind, intelligent silence. I started doing women’s hair in my apartment whenever I didn’t have a shift or a cleaning gig. The rules were they needed to bring the hair dye along with them, so I wasn’t responsible for the shade, and a tip was mandatory, because the blow dryer blew my electricity bill through the roof.

I went on dates with men I didn’t like and got paid by the hour. I took advantage of my killer legs. I didn’t do anything but cling on their arms, but I still threw up every time I came back home and watched my daughter sleeping soundly next to my bed. I didn’t know what I would do if she ever did that to support her kid, to make sure they had formula, clothes, and medical insurance in place.

I remember the day I started smoking. I’d put Rory to sleep—she was two years old then, exactly one year after I ran away from Glen—and slipped into my tiny, dated bathroom. I looked in the mirror, adorned with puke-green seventies tiling, and couldn’t believe the dark shade under my eyes.

I wanted to cry.

I wasn’t beautiful anymore, even though my entire life was still ahead of me. I was a few months shy of twenty-one, for crying out loud. All my friends were dating, studying, going out, or focusing on their exciting, new careers, and I was either working or begging Rory to stop crying.

I wanted to do something for myself—something destructive but indulgent. Alcohol was out of the question. I’d seen what it did to Glen. So I checked on Rory again—still asleep—and slipped out to the local mart down the block. I bought myself a pack of something fancy-looking and a Zippo and came back home. Made myself a cup of coffee, cracked a window, and lit up.

The first cigarette made me nauseous.

The second calmed me down.

I’ve never bothered to kick the habit. It’s my small way of telling the universe to fuck off.

As for the letter I sent Malachy…look.

At this point I was acutely aware of the fact that Ireland was not for the Jenkins girls. I ran away from it, leaving the father of my child arrested and eventually thrown in jail. Everyone in Tolka hated me, and Rory by proxy. Malachy reminded me of Glen every single time my daughter spoke about him.

The music, the guitar, the songwriting, the charm, the alcohol, the hysterical impatience, the whirlwind romance, and the ability to drive women to madness. I was terrified, and sure, he was just a phase—the first real, exciting guy she’d ever met.

I only half-lied in that letter. I told him the truth about the thought process of being pregnant at eighteen. I just lied about my identity.

It wasn’t Rory who wrote to him; it was me.

And I didn’t abort the baby; I kept her.

Not that I didn’t think about having an abortion at the time. I went as far as booking an appointment at the clinic. But when I arrived and flipped through the leaflets, the clock moving at a snail’s pace, each tick-tock sound flicking my skin like a welt, I realized I couldn’t do it.

Not to her. Not to me. We were in this together.

Then there was her scar.

Of course, I wanted her to hide or remove it. But I couldn’t afford the plastic surgery. I hate it, okay? That’s the truth. It’s a constant reminder of how I failed my daughter. I couldn’t keep her safe from her own father, even when the writing was on the wall, smeared in a drunk’s man vomit.

There are the good souls asking me why I didn’t tell Rory the entire story. Well, what kind of good would it have done her? It was easier to keep her innocence intact, to send Father Doherty gifts, which he sent back to her, and pretend her father was functioning and loving and present. Should I really have told her we sent him to jail? Should I have scarred her again before she even knew how to spell her own name?

I let her think what she wanted to think.

That he was some kind of a hero, that she was deeply loved.

She already thought I was lame. So I scored a few more lameness points. Big deal.

All I ever wanted was to protect my daughter.

By hiding the letters.

By telling Malachy to back off.

Sure, the way I did it may offend some people. I definitely took it too far. Most parents in my position, I believe, would have ignored Mal’s letters. Or simply not opened them in the first place. But I thought I was saving her.

And I’ll do anything in my power to help her.

Even if it kills me.

Even if it villainizes me.

That’s what they don’t tell you in the movies. Bad guys have hearts, too.

Present

 

Mal

 

Finding Debbie Jenkins at my doorstep was akin to finding dog shit on my porch, lit on fire, attached to a ticking time bomb, which had been secured to a school bus full of kids.

This woman has messed with my life more than anyone else I know, and still, I called her here, knowing that Rory needs her. I put her on a plane—first class, in case you were wondering, a luxury I’d never indulge in myself—so she could salvage her relationship with her daughter.

When I open the door, she’s staring at her pointy, glittery cowgirl boots with a frown, drawing a circle with the tip of the right one. Rory wasn’t exaggerating about the hairspray, highlights, and Coyote Ugly outfit. Her mother looks like a Vegas showgirl who fell asleep under the blazing sun and woke up twenty years later.